It’s fantastic. A gigantic witch’s cauldron of fire. It’s like a Viking’s funeral, barbaric, savage, overwhelming. It’s a staggering, thundering, petrifying spectacle. We’re witnessing the dying convulsions of a hunted beast. And we’re all cowering under the irresistible force of the twilight of the gods.
(Mike Fowler, The Battle Of The River Plate, 1953)
Sunlit Path © John McLaughlin, 1973
La Mere De La Mer © John McLaughlin, 1973
Tomorrow's Story Not The Same © John McLaughlin, 1973
A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.
(Honoré de Balzac, Physiologie Du Mariage, 1829)
Let's now explore more evidence of the abhorrent cultural appropriation of India's millennia-old heritage, with a soundtrack by Mahavishnu Orchestra. Led by Doncaster-born John McLaughlin, who self-identified as "Mahavishnu", until he admitted that this stolen fabricated identity did not reflect his whole true white colonialist self. Or summat. First a harvest of live tracks, with full unedited renditions of pieces first released on Between Nothingness & Eternity, the last album by the band's first line-up, and its later continuator Unreleased Tracks From Between Nothingness & Eternity, interspersed with the versions released on the two albums. Followed by the full Apocalypse album, the first by the band's second line-up, with its sort of Elgar-Meets-Lloyd-Webber bombast, but in a good way. Never mind the irony, it's great stuff all along, culminating with two rather wild performances from the 1974 Montreux Jazz Festival.
As usual. Images. Click. Bigger. You know the drill. And here is your starter for ten.
Quite astonishingly, the Realm's Great Matter again seems to be the fabricated controversy over the Supreme Court ruling about sex and gender. Forget Ukraine, forget Gaza, the BBC's priority is to give a voice to the sanctimonious totalitarian activists who have been denying wrongthinkers a voice for the last ten years. Let's hear men whining again about losing privileges, not even realising that public opinion is getting more exasperated by the day by these displays of entitlement, and distancing itself more and more fröm The Cause. I can only recommend the great Suzanne Moore's take on that, spot on and witty as usual. Sex Matters has commissioned another poll from YouGov, for fresh data about what the Great British Public really thinks, not what the contaminated establishment media want you to think we think, and the results are conclusively unambiguous. A massive majority think that the Supreme Court has made the right decision.
Only the TikTok Generation go against the consensus, again proving how easily they can be manipulated after being indoctrinated literally since kindergarten. How else do you explain the massive difference of opinion with the Millennials, the last generation who were not relentlessly bombarded with propaganda worthy of Putin's Propagandastaffel? It is also quite a sign of the times that Londoners, Labour voters and LibDem voters support the ruling, when they all were previously more open to lend a kind ear to the tenets of gender ideology. Remember earlier polls, who found 54% of Brits supporting the "biological sex" approach in December, and then 59% in April, just after the ruling was published. In just one month, support for the Supreme Court ruling has surged from 42% to 50% among Labour voters, and from 41% to 53% among LibDem voters, totally self-inflicted defeats for the gender lobby. Their last angle of attack is that the ruling is not clear and needs additional "guidance", and again the Great British Public don't buy it.
The unsatisfying part here is that fewer people opine that the ruling has made the definition of 'sex' clear than support it. It is really odd that quite a large number of Brits are falling for the gender lobby's strategy of procrastination and obfuscation, that is designed precisely to make people doubt their own judgement and second-guess themselves. Such an obvious trap, and not a very smart one. But it sometimes works, the most ridiculous example being the Labour Party cancelling their Women's Conference out of fear of intimidation by men's rights activists. Another side of the fabricated controversy is "inclusion" in sports, another pet topic for activists who are never short of fake science to prove that men don't have the slightest physical advantage over women. Too bad, mates, the Great British Public massively think that the governing bodies of major sports have made the right decision, that transwomen are no longer eligible to compete in women's sports.
Support here is even more massive than for the Supreme Court ruling, proving that public opinion won't be misled by the mendacious faux progressive arguments about 'kindness' and 'inclusion', except again the incredibly gullible TikTok Generation. But this did not come out of nowhere, and the whole education system is to blame. First for letting activist teachers "bring their whole true self to work" unchecked, and stigmatising parents and pupils who objected. Then for capitulating to the whims of a fringe of permaoffended wankers, and giving up on teaching critical thinking, one of the true foundations of a free democratic society. Allowing the reign of terror of gender ideology zealots is just part of the problem, and there is a long way to go before we collectively cure the root causes, starting with the enablers taking full responsibility. For a start, what we can hope now is that all the governing bodies of sports who have sanctioned women for refusing to compete against men, or just objecting to the presence of men in their competitions, will dutifully apologise and repeal the sanctions. But I fear even this baby step is too much to ask, innit?
A woman is somebody that can have a baby under certain circumstances. A woman is a person who is much smarter than a man, I've always found.
(Donald Trump, 28 March 2025)
© Jan Hammer, 1973
Do you think I give a damn about your word of honour, hand on your heart, public school code? They don’t matter to a woman. Any woman. We fight for things that do matter.
(Hazel Bellamy, Upstairs, Downstairs: Word Of Honour, 1973)
As a side order to the main course of the YouGov poll, it is worth mentioning that More In Common publish weekly trackers, including what their panel consider the most important issues facing the UK. In the most recent iteration, what they label "the debate about transgender people" was picked by 2.2% of respondents, including 0.4% of the Scottish subsample, which is kind of hilarious when you consider the amount of gesticulation it has caused here. I'm not saying it's much ado about nothing, and that nobody gives a fuck outwith a wee metropolitan media bubble, but it sure fucking looks like it. Just saying. But there is definitely an echo of this in the YouGov poll, when they asked their panel which kind of impact they expect the Supreme Court ruling will have. It's less brutal but more than three quarters of Brits think it will make no difference either for themselves, or for their family and friends. And, if it does, it's expected to be more positive than negative.
The results for workplaces and leisure activities are quite interesting too, though somewhat intriguing. Quite predictably, the only demographic who envision more negative than positive effects are the TikTok Generation, totally formatted by social contagion. Then you have to wonder, what negative effects? The only ones I can clearly foresee are frivolous lawsuits from the likes of Fox Killer Maugham or former Judge McCloud. Interestingly, neither ever mentions that Supreme Court rulings are final and cannot be appealed at any Court in the UK, or that the European Court of Human Rights has itself ruled that it has no jurisdiction to annul domestic laws or administrative practices in any country. Which makes any such action irrelevant, as it is certain to lose or even be dismissed outright. But it wouldn't be the first time these two would lie or mislead about a legal matter, especially when there is an opportunity to make some dosh off the terminally gullible. Then they might have a bone to gnaw with the issue of 'gender markers', that YouGov approached from two sides. First about what should be used on official documents like driving licences and passports.
Ironically, this issue was brought back centre stage by Donald Trump, when he signed an Executive Order mandating that only M or F should be used on official documents issued in the United States. But the Orange Baboon is as economical with the truth as the gender ideologues he is crusading against, as he never mentions that Executive Orders do not make the law, unless they are supported by a delegation of discretionary power duly passed by Congress, which this one wasn't, and can anyway always be challenged in court. So The Donald was just indulging in the MAGA variant of virtue-signalling gesticulation. Oddly, only a slim majority of the British are in favour of using biological sex, with Labour and LibDem voters split. And it does not really get more conclusive when the focus of the question is shifted to the data to be used in digital services, currently under discussion in Parliament as the Data (Use and Access) Bill.
This specific aspect was dragged into the spotlight when Commons rejected, on party lines, an amendment from the Lords, that followed the Supreme Court ruling by defining "sex" as "biological sex". The vote was purely ideological, and acknowledged as such by activists who labelled the amendment "transphobic", without any consideration of the possible consequences. Which are directly linked to the basics of real biology, as everybody with a brain knows there are physiological differences between men and women, beyond the obvious ones the eye can see, and the less visible ones any dog instantly detects. Recording a 'gender identity' instead of the person's real sex can thusly have a disastrous impact of their healthcare, including in emergency situations that require quick decisions from the first responders. This is clearly acknowledged by serious medical publications that do not allow their work to be polluted by unscientific ideology. The Labour, Liberal Democrat and SNP MPs should have thought it through before voting against common sense and deliberately defying the Supreme Court ruling to make a cheap political point.
I'm sure there will be a slot for Gary Lineker on Loose Women.
(Janet Street-Porter, Have I Got News For You?, 23 May 2025)
© John McLaughlin, 1973
Keir Starmer is the orange ball-chewing manacled gimp of Brussels.
(Boris Johnson, 19 May 2025)
Of course, we can't live without some juicy controversy on whatever issue, and the next item on the menu was obviously Keir Starmer's trade deal with the European Union. There even was a semblance of debate in Commons, which Nigel Farage failed to attend because he was on a jolly to France. Really can't make that shit up, can we? But Kemi Badenoch couldn't help making a fool of herself again, having nothing to lose after a poll proving that the Conservatives are on shifting ground, even more so than Labour. As usual, the first victim was truth, as nobody really cared about what the deal actually says. Of course, Starmer had to embellish it, as it is far from being a full blown Brexit Reset, and does not include anything that Boris Johnson wouldn't have signed up for in due course. But neither is it surrender or betrayal of the fishing industry, as both the SNP and Scottish Conservatives claimed. I find it really sad that it took The Islington Gazette and some blokes from Devon to remind the public that Starmer's deal is actually better for the fishing industry than what we had before it, by removing a shitload of red tape and extra costs. Interestingly, YouGov found that Brits are actually split on it.
The chart here excludes "Don't knows", as I don't give a shit about the opinion of people who don't have an opinion on that. I think we see ideological prejudice at work here, significantly from Reform UK voters. They are so hell-bent on a hard-core Brexit that will never happen that they can't see how much they are manipulated by Trump and Putin, both of which have a vested interest in sowing division and acrimony between the UK and our natural allies in Europe. YouGov did not single out voters of the loony owenjonesian left, but I am quite sure there are still traces there of Lexit, the asinine concept of a "Left Brexit" that was duly propagandised by Talcum X in The Islington Gazette. YouGov offered more comprehensive coverage of the issues at stake, which helps put the New Model Brexit debate into perspective. There were loads of psychodrama and melodrama on display, as is now the default option every time the B-word is mentioned. If Fawlty Towers was produced today, they would have an episode called "Don't mention Brexit", especially in front of French guests. But the YouGov poll shows that the Great British Public, unlike most politicians, know what they want.
Closer ties with the European Union, without rejoining it or the Single Market or the Customs Union, is the preferred option. Starmer's deal should definitely get more credit, as it is exactly what it is attempting to do without going too bluntly against the Brexit doxa. But the most interesting part is the second preferred option, the much simpler one of rejoining the EU. The 53-35 split translates into 60.2% to rejoin vs 39.8% to stay out without undecideds, a far more convincing result than the 2016 referendum, and it's not even the all-time high. This is definitely worth exploring in more detail as YouGov offers crosstabs by nation and region, and have polled this twice this year, in March and May. We thusly have a very enlightening comparison between how the people voted nine years ago, and how they would vote today if offered the choice between rejoining the European Union or staying out, with undecideds removed for a significant direct comparison. What we have here proves that Starmer has everything to win with a bolder approach. The Remainer Scotland and London would vote even more strongly to rejoin, and the Leave vote would be reversed everywhere else to support rejoining.
This totally demolishes Labour's perennial argument for inaction, that they can't endanger all their MPs elected in Leave constituencies. Which is totally cretinous at face value, as it assumes that voters haven't changed their minds over nine years of complete Brexit disaster, when polls have offered evidence that they have for almost four years. The real question now is if there are any Leave constituencies left at all and, if there are, how many are actually represented by a Labour MP. Labour would have to fall back on their other favourite bogeyman, the threat of the Reform UK vote. But even that does not hold water, as YouGov's Brexit poll was fielded at the same date as one of their voting intentions polls that put Reform UK seven points ahead overall, and beating Labour in every region of England bar London. This same poll says that the combined Labour and LibDem vote would be higher than the Reform vote in every region, which is certainly a better assessment of the Europhile vs Eurosceptic divide. The ball is in Starmer's court now, and he should be encouraged to go further in restoring ties with the EU. Honestly, given Labour's very bleak prospects in current polls, what the fuck does he have to lose anyway?
Why is Starmer taking us back into the sweaty embrace of Brussels when it's massively uncompetitive, low growth and low productivity?
(Boris Johnson, 19 May 2025)
Hope © John McLaughlin, 1973
Awakening © John McLaughlin, 1971
Americans know freeloading when they see it, and ours can't go on for ever.
(Boris Johnson, 28 March 2025)
Another poll from Ipsos has offered some fresh insight into the British public's thoughts about the UK-US trade deal. The deal that is not a deal because it says itself that it is not a deal. In proper legalese, it probably doesn't even qualify as a MOU, so non-committal and convoluted the language is. It is clear that the Great British Public want it to remain that way, just a fuzzy hypothetical on the most distant horizon, as we totally understand where our true interests lie. Not in deals with a totally unpredictable administration, that may change its stance overnight and renege on all its past commitments, just because their decrepit President woke up with acid reflux. But in deals with an admittedly bureaucratic, but predictable and reliable, European Union that is not governed by the whims of paleo-libertarian plutocrats. That's what Ipsos found, a strong majority leaning towards Europe, even when the dreaded word "barriers" is thrown into the broth, with Scots the strongest Europhiles and only the Reform UK voters favouring the USA.
Now I can hear the lobotomised Brexiter nob having an orgasm because Trump has announced 50% tariffs on goods from the European Union, and us being hit by 'only' 10% is summat of a "Brexit benefit". This is the kind of cretinous bullshit that only shitbrained wankers as illiterate in economics as the Orange Baboon can vomit. Trump's tariffs will only fuel inflation in the USA and reduce the volume of exports from the EU to the USA, with the reduction in activity putting both at risk of a recession in just a few months' time. And it will instantly ricochet on the UK because the EU is still, despite the field of ruins left behind by the Brexit shambles, our first trading partner by a wide margin. 41% of our exports and 50% of our imports, or 46% of our global trade, while the USA account for only 18%. That should be the guiding light of British policies, not an ill-advised impulse to appease an erratic lunatic in the name of the Special Relationship he totally trashed, or blind ideological submission to the tenets of Trumpist Christo-fascism. Besides, Brits have no delusion about the real meaning and impact of tariffs.
It is quite amazing that the average Brit has a better understanding of the consequences of tariffs than the economically illiterate POTUS and his swarm of sycophants, who value their own cushy positions in the most deranged and incompetent administration in recorded history more than the common people's interests. The Orange Baboon may be looking at William McKinley in his search for a role model in unhinged protectionism, but the true nature of the Trump Tariffs is closer to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which was opposed by all serious economists of the time and exacerbated the toxic effects of the Great Depression. It is odd to see Trump vindicating Albert Einstein and his proverbial quip, which may not even be his, that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. But that is a typical trait of a man who has learned nothing from history because he has fuck all knowledge of history besides the price or real estate in downtown New York City. And understands only blackmail and coercion to achieve his goals, to which the Great British Public are determined not to submit.
Ipsos submitted a succinct, but meaningful, array of concessions the Trump Administration may demand before proceeding to actual negotiations on an actual trade deal to their panel, and won't have any of it. This totally mirrors the EU's official position, and also explains why the British Union of Trumpists were squealing "betrayal" at the deal with the EU that barely scratched the surface layer of Brexit dementia. Strengthening our standards, in line with those implemented by the European Union, instead of lowering them to appease American plutocrats, is certainly a 'barrier' to the invasion of subpar US-made food and products. Nigel Farage can't accept this because he has to pay his dues to his American donors, and he doesn't give a shit anyway because his wealth and German passport will shield him from the consequences of a capitulation to the Big Business lobby. But there is also a warning to New Model Labour here. The Great British Public don't want any involvement of US private interests in our most important public services, or any tax relief for already under-contributing billionaires. Will Starmer, Streeting and Reeves listen? Surely they should, when even Greenland is giving the Orange Baboon the finger, and choosing to side with Europe.
Time for Britain to lead the world out of tariff chaos, and end the tragedy of American cheese.
(Boris Johnson, 11 April 2025)
© John McLaughlin, 1971
On Day One in office Starmer made a colossal goof for which we're all paying the price. It's time to bring back Rwanda.
(Boris Johnson, 17 May 2025)
Now we have another debate on our hands, about immigration, in which we definitely need words of wisdom, serenity and civility like only Boris Johnson can speak. Let him be. No shit, mates. Thank Dog we have YouGov and More In Common to enlighten us on such sensitive issues. And they're like dogs, actually. Canines love to sniff each other's butts, just like pollsters love to sniff our brains. Let's start with YouGov, who have the advantage of old age, or experience if you like, leading to a long history of conducting polls that ask the same questions at regular intervals, so they have backlogs on all major issues going back six years. And that covers immigration, of course, and how the Great British Public think the government of the day has handled immigration. They used just that one word all along, "immigration", no descriptors or specifics that could inject bias into the replies. So it's plausibly the most reliable approach we have now, going back in time, think of it, to the last days of Theresa May at Number Ten. The first five datapoints are hers, and then you have the long cohort of her successors.
So, we have established that the Great British Public were never happy with the way the government has been handling immigration. Over the last six years, that is, but I guess the Victorians would have felt the same. And surely the Anglo-Saxons too, with all those Danes and Normans barging in to nick their cows and their wives. Because, ye ken, it would be wrong to think that immigration has been weaponised only since Tsarist pogroms drove Jewish families into exile on Cable Street. It has ever been so, as English DNA is pretty much engineered to dislike foreigners, even Hercule Poirot and the waiters at Benidorm. And don't get me started on the Scots and Irish. Or Nigel Farage's Huguenot and German ancestry. In an attempt to frame the issue in less binary terms, YouGov asked their panel how they think political parties and leaders feel about immigration, and how they would rate themselves. Which is not necessary enlightening, as I don't really know what 'pro-immigration' and 'anti-immigration' actually means. I suspect it relies more on unreliable narratives than objective criteria, except for the part where Brits rate themselves. Which is, sadly but predictably, leaning towards opposition to immigration.
More In Common added an interesting touch, asking their panel what they think Labour's plan about immigration is. It turns out the British public don't have a clear and solid opinion on this. It looks like the recent White Paper on immigration has not really enlightened the Great British Public, despite clearly signalling that New Model Labour's policy leans more towards restrictions than open arms. Through this prism, the proportion of Brits thinking that Labour somehow want to increase the number of people coming to the UK is quite surprising, unless you assume that a quarter of Brits, and half of Reform voters, summat lend an ear to the white supremacist myth of the Great Replacement, and are ready to believe that New Model Labour are part of a globalist conspiracy to 'genocide the white', as Donald Trump's fake news would put it. All I would venture safely is that the last year of performative politics have left British public opinion in full confusion about immigration, just as about most other issues where a clear vision seemed to prevail only a few years ago. Guess that is a Brexit benefit.
Of course, the concept of a pro-immigration Labour really doesn't hold water for one nanosecond when you look at the latest official statistics, that show that 'net migration', a cold statistical concept if there ever was one, has been cut by half in 2024. But why would Reform UK let facts get in the way of propaganda, when they still have stuff up their sleeves to feed fearmongering clickbait headlines until the next general? It will be fun to see what the Conservatives make of these numbers at the next PMQs. Will they praise Starmer for these results, and try to take credit for half of them? Or will they plod on down the road of complete shamelessness and blame Starmer for not having eliminated all of it? My tenner is on the latter. If you think that Boris Johnson is a wee smitch hyperbolic in his assessment of Labour's immigration policy, just wait for Kami Badenoch. She knows that using the Polish plumber and the Albanian lorry driver as scarecrows is a bit passé, so I think we are now at the stage where the Youth Mobility Scheme with the EU is summat like 10.000 30yr-old Romanians coming here with six kids each. No shit, mates, she heard it at the Strangers' Bar.
We're not against youth mobility schemes. We're against uncapped migration schemes.
(Kemi Badenoch, 16 May 2025)
© John McLaughlin, Billy Cobham, 1973
Enemies of our country are arriving in small boats. Only weak governments would allow this.
(Nigel Farage, 17 May 2025)
We definitely need the soft cuddly voice of Nigel Farage, the man who has more followers on TikTok than all other 649 MPs combined, because none of them are on TikTok, to lead the way on immigration. I guess he could ask his fanbase in Benidorm for some useful advice about foreigners who don't want to integrate in the country that offers them a one-bedroom timeshare. There is a more useful way of surveying the immigration debate than asking the public what they think Labour thinks, and that is asking them what they think. Which does sound like basic common sense, but only More In Common have done it so far, and what they found doesn't really say "inclusion and diversity". An outright majority of Brits think that the numbers of immigrants coming into the UK should be significantly reduced, and almost a majority think the same about refugees, but would it really be simplistic to blame just the 'social contagion' of far-right views for that?
The idea that the UK should reduce immigration, either slightly or significantly, is dominant even among Labour and LibDem voters, who are not the most likely to swallow racist conspiracy theories unchallenged. It is indeed quite embarrassing, as it implies that they basically agree with Starmer's "rivers of blood 2.0" rhetoric, and it is not just about illegal immigration. It's about all immigration, including refugees and asylum seekers, and that's definitely not Britain's best profile. More In Common even hammered the nail deeper, with a follow-up question about how 'concerned' we feel about refugees. Again, not immigration in general, but a targeted question about refugees only. There are many meanings to 'concerned' and I have a strong gut feeling that we can go for the worst here, that people are not actually 'concerned' about the refugees' well-being, but more like worried about their very presence here or even scared of them. Should we take that as a sign that the British public is already more contaminated by Farage's rhetoric than the Labour leadership? I am afraid that it is the case, and the political establishment can only blame themselves, and the establishment media, for it.
One of cornerstones of Starmer's new immigration is tightening up the rules for the so-called 'skilled visa route'. This is hugely reminiscent of Australia's current rules, which have been described as enforcing quotas by occupation. But there is a massive flaw right from the start, with Starmer's decision to close the 'social care visas' route. It doesn't really make sense to insist on letting in only skilled workers, and in the same breath deny entry to professionals of a sector where thousand of jobs are vacant. Or does Starmer expect that 'purebred' Brits will suddenly overcome their prejudices and volunteer to empty bedpans? Methinks not, and I don't see a really convincing case for this coming from Number Ten. In line with these new requirements, YouGov polled their panel about this concept of 'immigration enforcement', which certainly means 'immigration control' both for those who wrote and approved the White Paper on immigration, as they put the old and tired 'taking back control' mantra centre stage already in the title of the report, and for the British public as a whole.
I must say that I am quite perplexed by the list of activities YouGov has chosen to survey about less strict or more strict immigration control. How many Brits have ever been to a nail bar? How many Brits really care about the nationality of the waiter more about the quality of the food at the restaurant next door? The only activities that make sense in that laundry list are the health and care sectors, where we do actually need more qualified staff, and should be ready to welcome more people from other countries. Otherwise, we can also draw the conclusion, albeit reached in a flawed way, that the Great British Public do favour immigration control, which would be pretty much along the lines proposed by the White Paper. Which does not mean it would be fair, or even fit to answer our requirements in a number of sectors. More thought should be given to that, then. Now, just for fun, remember that the one British politician who should have a most positive view of immigration is Boris Johnson, being of American, Lithuanian, German and Turkish heritage and born in the USA, though not in a springsteenian way. And indeed he was convincingly pro-immigration. Until he wasn't.
We should celebrate immigrants and everything they do for our country.
(Boris Johnson, 21 June 2016)
Stepping Tones © Rick Laird, 1973
Celestial Terrestrial Commuters © John McLaughlin, 1971
I find the idea that helping people to end their lives could be a profit-making enterprise to be deeply disturbing, and plain wrong.
(Jonathan Hinder MP, 16 May 2025)
Controversies love nothing more than chasing each other out of the public's eye, the news cycle and the Overton window. Especially when the establishment media help with a month-long supply of columns taking a stand on whatever they want us to think that we want them to take a stand. So, if you liked immigration, you're gonna love assisted dying, as we get closer to the day of the third reading of Kim Leadbeater's assisted suicide bill in Commons. Interestingly, legalising assisted suicide is also currently debated in Parliament in the country of my birth, with a less favourable approach to assisted suicide than here. There is another big difference as the debate has been reopened by Emmanuel Macron two years ago already, the draft bill was submitted more than a year ago to the National Assembly, and passed 305-199 on 27 May. It will now go to the Senate, who are likely to amend it quite substantially before taking a vote in the autumn. It will not be the end of it, as French law stipulates that the National Assembly and the Senate must agree on a common wording before a bill becomes law, which might take quite some time. But the French government has indicated that they are in no hurry to get a final version, even implicitly setting the deadline to early 2027, just before their next elections. In the meanwhile, YouGov polled the British public again, first about the principle of making assisted dying legal. Of course, the British public agree, as they already did last year.
Then YouGov tried to squeeze some more juice, a few more points of support for the bill, by spelling out the content of the safeguards. The very safeguards that Kim Leadbeater promoted at length, will the help of The Islington Gazette's most Islingtonish columnist, but left many of her fellow MPs distinctly unimpressed, as the dominant feeling was that the amendments had actually weakened the safeguards included in the original draft, and the impact assessment was weak at best. I won't type the whole detail of the safeguards as used by YouGov, as you can find it in their report of the poll, and it is a verbatim of what was in the draft bill on the day the poll was fielded. The results is probably not what they expected, as it is a 2% swing from support to opposition. It's not massive, but still enough to identify some discontent at the way MPs reframed the bill. It is even surprising that so little support was lost, as the bill falls short of the safeguards the public considered necessary when they were specifically polled about that in detail, as I mentioned in an earlier article after the first reading.
The most shocking episode was of course privileged past-celebrity Ester Rantzen, the one who already pressured Keir Starmer to fast-track a hastily drafted bill through an inappropriate process, interfering with that process again with the usual sense of smug entitlement unique to the self-proclaimed woke elite. A layer of DARVO atop a layer of the usual sanctimonious bullshit about 'evangelical Trumpists Nazi bigots' or summat, which of course did not go down that well with MPs.. Esther is typically the kind of person who would label the opposition obscurantists and brag about having the support of three quarters of the Great British Public. But they actually don't have that, but could peddle it because we weren't told. Until YouGov told us. The same YouGov who told us that they had the support of three quarters, but surely thought it was too good to be true, smelt summat of a fishy rat in there, and reframed their poll's line of enquiry in a wholly different way for a follow up question that nobody had asked before and, at last, told us the true state of public opinion.
So, when you spell out the actual real life options, and not just the binary choice on the principle of assisted dying, only 58% support it unconditionally and another 8% reluctantly. But the one revelation that really natters is that one out of five of us support the principle, and would have said assisted dying should be legal at the first question, but oppose it in practice because the law can never provide the necessary safeguards about the kind of abuse that has been witnessed abroad, and of course everybody is thinking Canada here. If you rearrange the numbers the proper way, you see that it is one out of four supporters of the right to assisted dying who are actually saying that they don't want this bill, and I am definitely one of them. Keir Starmer and Kim Leadbeater can only blame themselves for that, as they chose an inappropriate way to ram a badly-drafted bill down our throats, and used confrontational rhetoric to back it. That's not the way it should be done, on a sensitive issue where a wider consensus should have been sought. The third reading will obviously be on a knife-edge, but it will probably pass. Let's just hope MPs will not have to regret their vote later, for example if we see that the bill's provisions are stretched to limit to eliminate "burdens to society", enforcing state-sponsored eugenics.
Everyone deserves dignity at the end of life but that starts with better care, not fewer options. Doctors and health professionals are raising concerns.
(Paulette Hamilton MP, 21 May 2025)
© John McLaughlin, 1971
Britain should pare back defence spending so it means just that. Defence, or protection from invasion.
(Owen Jones, 18 April 2024)
To my ears, Shitweasel's Weltanschauung on the Defence Of The Realm deserves the same fate as someone once suggested for Ayn Rand's atrocious Atlas Shrugged. This is not to be tossed aside lightly, it should be thrown away with great force, or summat. Talcum X surely deserves some credit as the only person in the Galaxy who can be more incoherent than Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Dmitri Medvedev combined, but he is definitely more bore than fun. He's just a transient avatar in a long line, those who let the Spanish Republicans die under the Stukas' bombs for fear of "escalation", those who sacrificed Czechoslovakia to appease Hitler and then reaped both war and dishonour, those who squealed "Better red than dead" at that free Billy Bragg concert organised by the CND and paid for by the Soviet Embassy in London. Then, as one fine mind from the country of my birth once said, il faut être économe de son mépris, étant donné le grand nombre de nécessiteux. Anyway, we are fortunate that the Great British Public disagree with Wee Owen, as shown by a recent in-depth probe by Focaldata. At least at face value.
But it is of course not as simple as that. Only a third of Brits support increasing military spending, when the UK government has already decided that we will, and each and every serious analysis of the international situation proves that we must. Hindsight, which always gives you 20/20 vision, also proves that we made a big mistake when we lowered our defence spending after the fall of the Berlin Wall, leaving us unprepared, underequipped and undermanned to face the current threats, that were actually highly predictable at least since 2014, and probably several years earlier if we had listened to all the warnings and not relished in the fallacy of the 'peace dividends'. I made the point three months ago that keeping defence spending at 3.5% of GDP, our current target for 2032, would have delivered massive amounts, actually more than enough to maintain a credible force level roughly similar to the 1970s, exactly what we need now to face the triple threat of Russia, China and American born-again isolationism. But we painted ourselves into a corner with the combination of taxphobia, shared by the Thatcherites and the current New Model Labour, and the rhetoric about the proverbial 'tough choices'. And therein lies the rub, as the Focaldata poll shows again that the Great British Public are totally confused about these choices.
There is an odd mix in the options selected by Focaldata, some of which address budgetary issues and other summat like a global philosophical approach. But every experienced pollster knows that generating confusion is a time-honoured and efficient way to bait your respondents up the garden path into a trap. The point where we contradict ourselves, as this set of replies shows, a situation the Great British Public must love as we do it in every other poll when they go beyond yes-or-no questions. That's how we end up saying in the same breath that we need increased defence spending to make the world safer and that we shouldn't increase defence spending because diplomacy is better. Can't have it both ways, mates. And the poll touches the issue of 'tough choices' just tangentially and inconclusively, as we opine that it is both money well spent and money that would be better spent elsewhere. Can you see it now? We are just opening the floodgates wide open to influencers who will label legitimate military options as 'warmongering' and others who will play the familiar populist tunes, both taking their cues from the bunker beneath the Kremlin. So where does that lead us now, with that 3.5% target?
Let's see the bright side of life here and say that's a tie, and that a third supporting it is not that bad a staring point. But can we trust New Model Labour to try and reverse that opposition, and keep a steady course towards the target in the meanwhile? You don't have to answer that, yet, but keep it in mind. Bear in mind too that efficient military procurement requires stability. You just can't say, "we need £1bn for potholes in Greater Manchester, so we'll shave it off the Royal Navy budget because it doesn't really matter if the next frigates take one more year to build". It can't work that way. We can't uphold the tradition of well-meaning but meaningless Defence White Papers or Strategic Defence Reviews that we remake as we go and never reach their objectives. It might sound Soviet, but what we need is a succession of Five Year Plans with attainable goals and, more importantly, ringfenced budgets for the duration. And I don't give a fuck if that goes against the doxa that "you can't tie the hands of the next Parliament". France has done just that for the last thirty years, just let your browser automatically translate it, so why can't we?
Can someone explain in a material sense why Britain spending more money on defence would be a deterrent to Russia?
(Owen Jones, 26 February 2025)
© John McLaughlin, 1971
This is not a time to quail, it is not a crisis, nor should we see it as an excuse for wobbling or self-doubt. But it is a moment for hope.
(Boris Johnson, 30 June 2016)
Focaldata obviously had to dig deeper to understand what is going on here, when we say we want to increase defence spending but don't want to increase defence spending while being aware that the current level of defence spending is inadequate. If that still makes sense summarised that way. So you have to go hunting for some extraneous explanatory variable that makes all the pieces fit together so it all actually makes sense. And it's surprisingly fairly easy to find, not just one, but two. Which are actually complementary, not surprisingly as they pretty much refer to the same future reality, once you have decoded the convoluted language used by Focaldata. Logically, the Great British Public is split down the middle on both, and the patterns of political differences are pretty similar. It's odd to see such indecision, when the lessons of the past should make that a no-brainer. The ancient Romans knew it already, when they recommended that si vis pacem, para bellum, and the current attitude of the Russian Reich offers more evidence. Predators smell blood only if they sense weakness, and can be deterred only by a lasting and unwavering show of strength. That's just what we failed to do in 1930s, and 85 million lost their lives, including 17 million in the Nazi extermination camps and half a million Brits.
Focaldata then explores another side of the issue, the place of military manufacturing in the UK's economy, and how it affects local communities. Bear in mind that the defence industry accounted for 84,000 full-time jobs in early 2024, the last time the UK government published official statistics. The largest defence contractor is BAE Systems, with 14,500 jobs at their submarine yard at Barrow-in-Furness, and anther 7,000 at their surface vessels yard on the Clyde. BAE Systems are actually not dependent on British military contracts, as they also sell lots of stuff abroad, in continuation of their predecessor Vosper Thornycroft, one of the most successful shipbuilders of the 20th century world-wide. That's a massive number of jobs, especially when you consider that the number of indirect jobs, those generated in other sectors by the industrial activities, is on average equal to the number of direct jobs. It generates massive revenues too for the local communities, and Focaldata found that a strong plurality of Brits agree that military industries are valuable contributors to reducing regional inequalities, the so called 'levelling up', while less than a third object to this characterisation.
With this, we're circling around another debate that is a favourite of those who love nothing more than riding their moral high horse, that of the morality of arms manufacturing. I would love to hear them lecture an audience about that at Barrow-in-Furness or Govan, almost as much as I would like to see Owen Jones mansplaining trans rights in Kabul. That's just the kind of rhetoric that weakened us both against Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and it should be dismissed as irrelevant in an era of obvious national emergency due to the rise of hostile powers and the betrayal of our once strongest ally. The issue is not whether or not we should devote more funding to defence, but where all that extra money should be spent. Focaldata found that the British public think it's money better spent at home, and I broadly agree, with just one observation. The choice is not strictly binary here, as there is a third option, joint procurement projects with the European Union, with a significant share of the business going to British firms. That's just what the EU's SAFE plan is designed to encourage, and we will get access to it thanks to our deal-that-is-a-real-deal-unlike-the-other-one with the EU.
But we now have another challenge on the Event Horizon, Donald Trump's Golden Dome, though you would have thunk he preferred golden showers. The chosen name definitely has a Harry Potterish ring to it, but he surely won't Buy British to make it. It sprang out of The Donald's fertile brain like Athena from Zeus' forehead, and is actually a reboot of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative of yore. Two generations ago, it was estimated that the thing would cost $53bn and take ten years to deploy. So experts have factored in inflation and estimated that the Orange Baboon's toy would cost roughly $542bn in this week's money. Some have also drawn an analogy with Israel's Iron Dome. This one cost $210m of initial development, plus $50bn per missile battery, for a total of $960bn, and took four years to deploy. Of course the land area of the United States is 446 times that of Israel, so that's a whole other order of magnitude. Amusingly, if you multiply the cost of the Israeli system by the area ratio, you get a hypothetical cost of $428bn, so we're pretty much in the same ballpark as the experts' back-of-a-train-ticket estimate. There is one potential Glitch In The Matrix though, if Trump chooses to reward Elton Muck for buying him the Presidency, and picks SpaceX as the main contractor. Because we know how well SpaceX's gizmos usually work, don't we?
My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.
(Boris Johnson, 2 December 2004)
© John McLaughlin, 1974
Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other.
(George Orwell, Partisan Review, 1942)
One of the most endearing traits of British politics is that lots of our politicians, and I include Talcum X in that lot as he has totally lost any right to call himself a journalist, become so intoxicated by their own fake news, generated to take broadsides at Starmer whatever he does, that they totally miss the really important real news. This was the case again with the deal between the UK and the EU. They were all so busy fantasising and spreading fabricated horror stories about the fishing rights that they totally forgot the other deal, the one that is vastly more significant for our future, the UK-EU Security and Defence Partnership, which brings the UK into the small circle of countries that have already identified common objectives and policies with the EU, and signed up the establish partnerships with the EU's Common Defence and Security Policy. It is a major step forward, and it also totally responds to the concerns of the British public, as identified in another poll fielded by Lord Ashcroft.
To sum it up, the days of the Special Relationship are gone, and we are left to fend for ourselves, so we'd better start swimmin' or we'll sink like a stone, for the times, they are a-changin'. But any decisions we make as a consequence of that risk being wrong if we don't first clearly identify what and who is most likely to threaten and endanger us, and derail our democracy. We also know how easy it is to either exaggerate or downplay threats, more often than not for political reasons, so I hope this is not the case with what Focaldata found. Globally it makes sense, as it shows the British public is aware of both internal and external factors that may constitute threats. The only one I feel is underestimated is cyber attacks, a specialty of Russian agents. We have had examples of major disruptions recently with the massive blackout in Spain and Portugal, and the failure of the communication networks in Spain. Both are exactly what a Russian cyber attack would look like, but just as a milder version of what skilled hackers can deliver, plausibly by disabling all in-built recovery protocols. We have already been targeted in the past, and will be again in the future, just more efficiently and on a grander scale. Mark my words.
But, in this ever-changing world in which we're living, we must not just be able to identify the plausible threats in broad terms, we must also be able to discern who's a friend and who's not, who will help and who will hurt. It matters to our defence and the means we devote to it, because when you got a job to do, you got to do it well, you got to give the other fellow hell. In that respect, it definitely looks like the Great British Public see through the lies and deceit coming from some of our politicians, fascists and faux socialists alike, who want us to believe the Russian Reich is a benevolent cuddly bear unjustly stigmatised and assaulted by the out-of-touch globalist elites or the colonialist white West, here their storylines differ. That doesn't work when Vladimir Putin is seen daily on the news affirming and reiterating his well-known genocidal imperialist long-term plan, and his minions are getting more unhinged by the day with direct ad nationem threats to us and our closest allies. Fortunately, we know where our friends are, and they're not in the rebooted Axis of Evil, or in the Global South. The Ukrainians are even our besties, which makes me happy. No shit.
It is also reassuring to see that a lot of Brits, unlike New Model Labour and the Rump Tories, have shaken off the illusion that the United States are our best friends and protectors. But there is still progress to be made here. We also don't fall for the narrative that the Russian Reich and its allies are not an existential threat, and are only reacting to us being a threat to us. That's bullshit and has always been. They are a clear and obvious threat, and not just directly as nations. Also, and possibly more importantly, through the terrorist organisations they fund, train, equip and manipulate. Russia and Iran have used terrorism before as a decoy, to create a diversion and take our eyes off their own crimes. And also because they know how easily we can fall for schemes designed to divide us and increase tensions between communities at home, which their fascist allies then use for electoral gain while the lobotomised woke left keep droning about our perpetual guilt and bigotry. So, the line it is drawn, the curse it is cast, admit that the waters around you have grown. He that gets hurt will be he who has stalled. The battle outside ragin' will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, for the times, they are a-changin'.
Britain is at no more risk of invasion than European nations that don’t fritter billions on warheads.
(Owen Jones, 18 April 2024)
© John McLaughlin, 1974
It's time for Donald Trump to take the boot off Ukraine's neck and put the squeeze on Putin.
(Boris Johnson, 26 April 2025)
Focaldata and Lord Ashcroft also surveyed the British public about their attitudes to Ukraine, which is the obvious unavoidable follow-up to any survey about our own defence. The least we can say is that the UK, and Europe generally, have done nothing meaningful or impressive to support Ukraine in the last few weeks. Quite the opposite actually, as the most salient feature is that they got more bark than bite, with a succession of bold statements and unfulfilled good intentions. This is definitely not how it works, as the Russian Reich sees every hesitation as evidence of weakness, and has enough paid agents in Western Europe to weaponise it and influence public opinions, some of which are already less supportive of Ukraine than ever before. Both pollsters first asked their panels how they assess the level of aid the UK has offered Ukraine so far. The numbers differ, but the general patterns are quite close.
The levels of support for Ukraine are still high across the whole political spectrum, as even Reform UK voters are not really supportive of cutting our aid, even if the FSB assets in the party openly advocate it. It is also interesting that Focaldata offered a wider array of political options, as their poll shows that SNP voters are the most supportive of serious aid to Ukraine, which was not a given if you consider the amount of pro-Russian rhetoric being peddled here. Just don't get me started on the inconsistencies of some in the Independence movement, who still haven't grasped that vociferously supporting Russia's genocidal imperialism doesn't make them look smart or credible. Reassuringly, the Great British Public are consistent, for once, when asked the obvious follow-up question. Only Focaldata asked it, as Lord Ashcroft probably felt he would be walking into a minefield if he asked it. So, mates, what should we do now? Simples, a majority want us to grant at least as much aid to Ukraine as we already do, and only a small minority want us to cut it.
Again, Reform UK voters are not really hell bent on following in Trump's footsteps and betraying Ukraine. Again, SNP voters are the most supportive of a democratic ally under aggression from a fascist dictatorship that also threatens us. But we have to factor in that we are not alone in this, even if it sometimes feels that we would be better off if we were. There's this Coalition Of the Willing that we helped found, who seem to be unwilling to do anything that could ruffle the Orange Baboon's feathers by taking more dramatic steps forward. And they also have public opinions. Always ready to help, Lord Mikey has sent his YouGov mercenaries polling not just the UK, but also the USA and four randomly selected European countries. Their support for Ukraine varies considerably, probably depending more on the strength of the Putinist Fifth Column among them than on their proximity to the frontline. Surprisingly, after all the bullshit spewed by Trump and Vance, US public opinion is the second most pro-Ukrainian after us, but sadly Germany, France and even Poland are not that reliable. Let's just hope it will not influence their governments the wrong way in this truly existential fight.
Of course, we can only welcome Friedrich Merz's announcement that Ukraine is at last free to use Western long-range missiles as they see fit. But, as every Western move since the beginning of the Russian aggression, it's too little too late, and is ineffective as Ukraine does not have enough missiles left for really disabling strikes on the Russian military. But does Merz have the votes in Bundestag to validate the delivery of Taurus missiles? Possibly not as it would only take 14 of the faux pacifist SPD MPs breaking ranks to defeat it, and it's quite likely that more than that are still on Putin's payroll one way or another. Interestingly, Merz has pretty much admitted that with the new deal between Germany and Ukraine, that includes joint production of long-range weapons in Ukraine. The subtext is quite clear, it will be faster to deliver Ukraine-built Tauri than to get a vote in Bundestag to transfer German Tauri. Which would not be instantly operational anyway, as Ukraine needs to retrofit their attack aircraft, probably the French Mirages first, to embark the Tauri, and train their pilots to use them properly. Let's wait for the next episode, then.
There is only one man still blocking peace, and that is the invader Vladimir Putin. He continues to murder innocent Ukrainians. It is time now to force him to the table.
(Boris Johnson, 1 May 2025)
© John McLaughlin, Eve McLaughlin, 1974
Maybe Putin doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently.
(Donald Trump, 26 April 2025)
There was a faint glimmer of hope when the Orange Baboon had one of his few moments of lucidity, and admitted he knows that Vlad The Butcher is a con artist who plays him like a broken fiddle. But he soon got off his meds again and forgot that Vladimir Putin's plan for Ukraine is the same as Benjamin Netanyahu's for Gaza. Destruction, ethnic cleansing, enslavement, juicy business. Though it kinda makes sense if you consider that Trumpistan, Bibisrael and the Russian Reich follow the same template, that of illiberal religious imperialist totalitarianism. That's why we must keep all three at arm's length and shut down the discredited lobbyists and influencers who are on their payrolls, always ready to interfere in our politics for their organ grinders' benefit. Fortunately, the main result of Trump's idiosyncrasies so far has been Europeans losing a lot of their traditional trust in the United States. Most significantly when the issue is the United States' real commitment to defending Europe against aggression from our Eastern flank. Lord Ashcroft's international polling shows it quite clearly. Just as it should be, now that the Orange Baboon has publicly admitted he has been protecting the Russian Reich all along.
It is quite revealing that British and German public opinions have pretty much the same assessment here, while Poles still believe they could count on the USA in the face of an existential threat. This is quite surreal when Trump's main threat so far has been to withdraw US troops from the Eastern Flank of NATO, to not hurt Putin's fragile feelings. What the Orange Baboon didn't see coming was, first, Charles III's speech at the Canadian Parliament, brutally taking down all of MAGA imperialism and their threats to a Commonwealth nation. And, second, Mark Carney seizing the opportunity to tell the White House to fuck off, and the US military industry with them, while turning to the European Union for new partnerships. That's Trump telt. It seems we have reached another level of insanity from the faux pacifist woke side too, with The Islington Gazette trying to make us feel guilty in the name of climate change, based on one study without the slightest evidence of genuine peer review. Looks like guiltmongering has been adopted as a weapon of choice by Soviet influencers, just like fearmongering. That should not deter us from further decisive action, like volunteering to be part of a peacekeeping force in Ukraine. Lord Ashcroft has polled this twice in March and May, and found a majority in favour both times.
This is the option that Vlad The Butcher doesn't want to see happening, for all the too obvious reasons. Which is precisely why we must push for it relentlessly, even if the Russian allies in the Trump administration are against it too. Their narrative, that US investments in Ukraine will be enough of a security guarantee, is fucking bullshit and they know it. A much stronger and more serious deterrent must be enforced, and that is obviously a force provided and led by nations that have no reason to favour Russian interests, as the United States have done since Trump's comeback. Putin has every reason to reject British presence as he knows our public opinion cannot be deceived as easily as the MAGA mob whose opinion is the only one that matters to Trump. Unlike the US administration, the Great British Public have no problem identifying and naming who is responsible for the failure of all peace efforts and the continuation of the war. Unequivocally Vlad The Butcher. Reform UK voters are the only ones blaming Zelenskyy in any meaningful way, though they have fellow travellers, usually not seen in any poll's crosstabs, on the far-left.
To give you an idea of what we are up against, besides the USA's betrayal, I had summat of a falling out with a non-descript woke wanker the other day on Bluesky. One of the faction that conflate supporting the unalienable rights of the Palestinian people against Israeli imperialism with idolising Hamas. To cut a long and painful story short, supporting Ukraine is racist because, you guessed it, Ukrainians are white. And therefore can only be Nazis. Can't make that fucking shit up, can we? That's what badly regurgitated deconstructivism and relativism does to your brains, mates. As cretinous as it is repugnant, but at least that one said the part aloud, that the other Putin-apologists usually keep quiet. Make no mistake, this is exactly the foundation of the total indifference to Ukraine shown across the deranged woke left of the Owen Jones variant. And also exactly how the lobotomised woke wankers give credibility to the fascists' conspiracy theories about "anti-white racism". And I'm glad to say I have absolutely no fucking problem with being on the same side as Boris Johnson on Ukraine. Suck it up, loonies of all shades.
Canada is not for sale. Ever. We don’t need a damn thing from the United States. We’re doing this with better partners, on better terms, and for the right reasons.
(Mark Carney, 27 May 2025)
© John McLaughlin, 1974
Hapless Starmer and Reeves are doing for Britain's economy what Harold Shipman did for gerontology. But at least young voters are learning about the Doom Loop of Socialism.
(Boris Johnson, 20 December 2024)
As you might expect, the last batch of polls clearly say that Labour need to get their arses in gear, if they don't want the self-fulfilling prophecy that they're gonna lose the next election to spread like Wi-Fi. until they reach the stage of a rapid unscheduled disassembly they can't recover from. Now, if Keir's spads pay any attention to the polls, they may have noticed something they should mention to the Great Leader. That the Conservatives are plausibly heading towards the depths of the polls, and the Liberal Democrats may soon be the third party again. In practical terms, that means Keir should stop worrying about Kemi Badenoch opposing decisions she would have made herself if she was PM, or Robert Jenrick cosplaying kindergarten Death Wish in the Tube. They have demonetised themselves parroting Farage, and now it's time to stop wasting time on attacking them, and concentrate the broadsides on the Little Turquoise Men if you really want to turn the tide shown by voting intentions trends.
If Keir Starmer doesn't know where to start, for fear of having Farage retorting that it's a bit rich of Labour to hit at him when they have nicked so much of his agenda on immigration he's going to charge royalties, he could delegate the task to Ed Davey. It is already clear that Mister Ed has totally got the knack for it, and has absolutely nothing to fear from Farage's replies. Besides, he is also quite popular with the British public. The third of us who actually know who he is, that is. And now we have a poll to prove it. As a side order and extension to the run-of-the-mill polling, YouGov also revamped the time-honoured 'Preferred Prime Minister' polling, with four names in the hat and six possible duels. Remarkably, the most interesting of these duels are definitely not the ones you would have guessed at first glance.
Now, just look at the results without undecideds, and tell me if you see what I see. Focus on the LibDem numbers. Aye, Mister Ed does better than Keir Starmer in a duel with Kemi Badenoch, and better than Kemi Badenoch in a duel with Keir Starmer. He does better than Kemi Badenoch and is tied with Keir Starmer in a duel with Nigel Farage, Could Mister Ed be the future of the UK? In a hypothetical preferential vote between the same four candidates, would he emerge first thanks to huge numbers of second preferences from both the Starmer camp and the Badenoch camp? I'm pretty sure that he would, and that would be quite a change from the usual boring duels between the same three people most of us expect nothing from. To spice up these dull moments a wee bit more, YouGov had the weird idea of offering their panel a shot at three scenarios, just to test the limits of deniable plausibility. First, imagine that, in your constituency, the only candidates that can possibly win are Labour or the Conservatives. Second, make that Labour or Reform UK. Third, make that Labour or the Greens, in clear suspension of disbelief. Basically, that's inciting voters to maximise tactical voting in extreme situations, and the results are quite interesting, funny side up.
Some parts of the voting intentions are revealing, especially what Conservative voters would do if told their own candidate doesn't have a fucking chance. A mass migration towards Labour to defeat Reform UK, which is probably not what the Tory strategists or John Curtice would expect. And it would be enough to grant Labour a bigger majority, proving that, despite all the media promotion, the Great British Public are not ready to give the fash a chance. Even more oddly, we have a mass migration from the Tories to the Greens to defeat Labour. The fucking Tories helping the fucking Greenies, rather than have another dose of Starmerism, who'd have thunk? On top of that, the third scenario would also trigger a strong migration from Labour to the Greens, I guess from the 'true left' faction who think Starmer is just Farage Lite, and giving the Pink-And-Blues a chance puts them on the right side of summat. There is a hilarious twist in the seat projections, that two of the scenarios would see the SNP totally nuked, with only the Lab-Fash duel offering them a wee crack to sneak two MPs through. Then the most intriguing part is what would happen in the very implausible event of a Lab-Green duel, that would deliver a hung Parliament with a Lab-Green coalition being the only feasible option for a stable government. That one would definitely test Labour's capability to rein in the Greens' performative kindergarten politics to avoid totally ruining the Four Nations in a matter of weeks. I could almost wish to see that, or maybe not.
If Starmer now makes Britain the rule-taking, non-voting punk of Brussels, he'll face political extermination.
(Boris Johnson, 9 May 2025)
© John McLaughlin, 1974
Russia is not my enemy and their military action against Ukraine was provoked by the aggressive actions of NATO. Russia is justified in defending itself from NATO aggression.
(Tommy Sheridan, 13 November 2024)
Scotland's Great Matter right now seems to be the Scottish Parliament by-election in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse. It will be held this Thursday, after the untimely death of SNP MSP Christina McKelvie, who had held the seat since 2011, the first time it was fought on its current boundaries. McKelvie had previously stood unsuccessfully for the predecessor seat Hamilton South. An unprecedented ten candidates are standing at the by-election, not including the Alba Party, sticking to their policy of standing only for the regional lists at general elections. Thank Dog we will thusly be spared a campaign stop of Putin propagandist Tommy Sheridan or Hamas supporter Craig Murray. Which does not mean we will not hear loads of bullshit in the last days of the campaign, as Reform UK are expected to pour a lot of resources in this by-election, hoping to make it a turning point in their infestation of Scotland.
The background we have now is the general trends of Holyrood voting intentions since the last election in 2021. Basically, that's mediocre for the SNP, really bad for Labour and the Conservatives, and surprisingly encouraging for the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK. No poll has been fielded about this by-election, so I will try a risky prediction, solely based on the most recent Survation poll, the last Full Scottish we have in store. You will find my last update on the general trends of Holyrood polling, and this last poll in particular, in my article of two weeks ago. Results for 1999, 2003 and 2007 are the aggregate of Hamilton South and Hamilton North and Bellshill, the duet of predecessor seats from which the current one was carved. 2011 and later are for the current constituency.
There has been a lot of fearmongering about the plausibility of a Reform UK breakthrough in Hamilton, from The Islington Gazette to The Scottish Pravda, through the upper echelons of the SNP and Scottish Labour. And you know what? This time they may be right, just this once. My projection, which owes nothing to the overhyped John Curtice's platitudes, goes beyond what you can deduce from the Survation poll's national data. It factors in the poll's regional crosstabs, that show Reform UK hugely overperforming in Central Scotland and Glasgow, where you would expect SNP-Labour one-on-ones to be more likely. This is why I feel safe to predict that Reform UK will come second, nicking votes not just from the Conservatives, but from Labour too and possibly even the SNP. This won't be enough to gain the seat, but it will put all other parties in an awkward situation. Consider that a first shot across the bow, and up your game, mates.
Don't believe the Western bullshit. This is a proxy war against Russia, financed and armed by NATO in support of a corrupt and Nazi dominated regime.
(Tommy Sheridan, 28 November 2024)
© John McLaughlin, 1974
The Prime Minister needs to stop whining and own up to his own failures. This Labour government is shafting the country. And Labour MPs laugh again.
(Kemi Badenoch, 21 May 2025)
Now, when you look at the breakdown of current voting intentions by nation and region, there are indeed hints that the current Fascist Scare peddled by the Scottish politicariat and metropolitan punditariat may not be totally unfounded. Now we have Reform UK as the second party North Of The Wall, and Nigel Farage is using every old stunt and trope in the book to make them first. But the entitled Scottish politicariat are stuck in their cretinous ways, kowtowing to the bourgeois luxury beliefs of a privileged metropolitan middle class fringe, as if it was the way to fight off fascism. No wonder the working class feel totally alienated and turn to the one pretending to speak for them, when he obviously is not and is just gaslighting them. Just ask yourselves why the Trumputinists are also the second party in hipster-wokeified London too, with the Labour-Reform vote shares there disturbingly similar to the SNP-Reform vote shares here.
If you look back in time, the Postwar Dream, as defined by Attlee and Bevan, remained consensual throughout the political spectrum for a long time. Thatcherism and Blairism may have shaken part of its foundations, but most of it still stands. And now we have the New Model British Union of Fascists cosplaying as its best defenders and the voice of the working class. Which is fucking bullshit when you look at their real complete agenda, that would do more for the upper centile of the über-wealthy than for the common people. It is really amazing that voters all across the Three Nations are ready to send dozens of Reform MPs to Westminster, as the current seat projections show, and put our future in the hands of a geezer who absconded to a luxury jolly abroad while Parliament was sitting. Are we really collectively stupid enough to endorse an absentee PM after Clacton has had to endure an absentee MP since the last election? Some return to sanity is badly needed, and it does not go through the poundshop Oswald Mosley. But neither does it go through the return of kindergarten wokeism.
Enough spoilers and teasers for now, here is what this week's big picture looks like. Snapshot taken from the last four polls, covering the whole of the past week, with a supersample of 7,606. I've also included what Electoral Calculus, the punditariat's preferred prognosticator, makes of the same vote shares and, oddly, their predictor is constantly delivering bigger Reform UK headcounts than my model. Don't ask me why. Whatever, it's not getting better for Labour, though the most salient point is that the Conservatives are getting closer by the day to an Extinction Event Horizon. Another point of interest is that most of the recent Reform UK surge came after the English locals, when biting off huge chunks of the Conservative vote propelled them further into the stratosphere than any SpaceX gizmo has ever gone. It's like rats coming aboard the ship, but also highly reminiscent of what happened to the Brexit Party in 2019, around and after Theresa May's totally unnecessary European Parliament election. A surge to the top slot, followed by a quick downfall when their voters returned to the Tory nest in a matter of weeks. Just saying. Of course, back then it was about preventing a Marxist-Leninist takeover of the Kingdom and an invasion of locusts, wasn't it? Not quite what we have now, save perhaps the locusts. And some venomous frogs too.
Now the question is, can Labour extirpate themselves from that fucking mess they have cornered themselves into? Remember the next general is four years away, and may not happen anyway if we become an oblast of the Federation of Russia. Just kidding, mates. Then I remember what happened in the country of my birth when they had their election too last year. If they had had first-past-the-post, Marine Le Pen's National Rally and their allies would have got 299 seats out of 577, 10 better than an outright majority. But the second round granted them only 144, less than half. Just because there was a massive "anything but Le Pen" firewall built around them in the week between the two rounds. Here, we would have to build the firewall preemptively, including deals between like-minded parties to not stand against each other in select key constituencies. Basically, share the cake before it goes into the oven. Not available in Scotland, terms and conditions apply. And, before you even think of muttering it, no, that sort of arrangement is not illegal in the UK. Parties have the unalienable right to stand where they want, and not stand where they want not. And nobody would bat an eye if that was the sure way to keep Putin... oops, sorry... Farage out of Number Ten, would we? So, it would be wise of them to start those talks now. By the way, Find Out Now and More In Common also polled Eurovision, but I really couldn't be arsed to give even the shadow of a fuck.
People I meet abroad now pity us Brits over the sheer ghastliness of Starmer's socialist sogfest of gloom.
(Boris Johnson, 24 January 2025)
Smile Of The Beyond © John McLaughlin, Eve McLaughlin, 1974
Drums © Michael Walden, 1974
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